


A Dog in the Next Life

by kollapsar



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: D/s, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gunplay, M/M, M/M/M, Plot With Porn, Rape/Non-con Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-19
Updated: 2016-10-19
Packaged: 2018-08-23 08:43:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8321317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kollapsar/pseuds/kollapsar
Summary: As fascinated as he may be by the new Overboss, Mason has a crew to run and respect to keep, and Alexander Fortune is changing things up a little too fast and clean for the Pack's- or anybody's- liking. Still, underestimating Fortune and his little soldier boy adjutant may just be the worst hand Mason ever plays. [Also known as, Mason tries to Alpha so very hard, gets Alpha'd far harder.]





	

**Author's Note:**

> I blame Aria and Ben for everything so you can blame them too, but I hope you enjoy. Also, my male sole survivor, Alexander Fortune, can also be read in my other fic, Ethical Calculus. He's got his shit a little more together in this fic- kind of to a scary degree. Have fun, kiddos.

There’s been word about on the new Overboss. Word on the man he is. Word on what he’s done. What he likes.

Word on the pretty thing he had trailing after him when he first traipsed into the place and put Colter down. Word on how they broke in Colter’s little cushy flat over the pond veritable seconds after Overboss gained his new title. There’s something to be said about a bloody hand-streak visible on the glass windows even a hundred meters away from the ground. There’s a strange, held-breath hush in Nuka World for the first time, he thinks, in months. A waiting hush.

Mason- well. He doesn’t think much himself, even if Gage did put the man through the Gauntlet. So what if a guy can put a cocky Raider boss down and fuck a good one out on top his winnings before Colter’s even cold? Leaders have been picked for less, and Mason’s deposed Alphas for more.

He’s interested, yes, listens keenly on the details the Omega footsoldier provides on bended knees. But what good boss doesn’t have a vested interest in where these chips will fall?

 

Still, Mason finds he has a lot to take in when he first gets a full look at Alexander Fortune and his adjutant officer; the sun on his freckled flesh and the light streaming off his glasses. Those glasses are nothing but reflections. They let him get a good view of the sight he must look atop his throne in all his motley paints and beads in his little corner of the kingdom- they give him a glimpse of just how they both got exactly where they are.

Nuka World is already a messy juxtaposition of motifs, and the new Overboss just brings in a new one- guns and glasses and a pursed-lipped stare that yells  _ Brotherhood scraps  _ to Mason’s eyes like nothing else. And that crossed-arms legs-apart disapproval of that pretty piece to the side of him? Oh, he’s amused now. Like Mason should be scared by two big men with guns on his own turf.

“Look. It ain't like anyone's broke up about Colter,” he says, watching the posture of the man as he speaks. Fortune is doing the rounds- he gets it. He’s posturing and figuring out where they all stand, and Mason doesn’t envy him; leading the restless, bloodthirsty scraps Colter’s left is herding cats at best. And here he is, a complete stranger to the game when there’s bosses about who could easily put him down. More experienced bosses.

He yanks the jerky from his teeth and feels the salt soak his tongue, draws him out on his seconds as he chews. “Just figured on his replacement being... Well, different.”

The man plays the patience game back to him. Mason finds himself watching as Fortune tucks a cigarette case out of his breast pocket and cuffs a hand to brace it from the wind as he lights up. The flame glow is bright against his glasses; the dogs of the arena yip and growl over the low hiss of the cherry catching fire. “What,” he says, eventually, smoke pouring from his lips and curling over the fur rim of his jacket. “Not smutty enough for you? Sorry to disappoint, but I showered this morning.”

He snorts and shoves the rest of his jerky in his mouth. “Yeah. That’s one I’ve definitely never heard before.” And Mason inevitably imagines him and that piece of his fucking over that window, unshowered, hands still soaked in the gore of the Gauntlet, palms sliding over the window and each other’s hips and sides as they view their brand new kingdom. “Humor could use some work.” There’s no question- by height and posture, it’s the piece on the side that’s getting it. His very stature bows to Fortune, mirrors him, defers to him. “But Gage says you’re the boss, so you’re the boss. Name’s Mason. Alpha of the Pack.”

He sees the snort of ridicule, even though the noise of the auditorium may drown out any sound of it. “Alexander Fortune.” Soft. Like he’s a little busy taking it all in and thinking. “And this i-”

“I know.” Mason doesn’t have the patience for this turn-by-turn gracious exchange shit. They say Fortune is some kind of big man out east, but he’s still greener than a pup here. “Look, let’s cut to the chase, boss,” he says, standing. Now they both are, only he’s got stairs’ advantage on Fortune, and Fortune’s got the mirrored glasses on him. Boss feels like such a sardonic term for a man who’d likely not stand up to him past a minute in the arena. “Colter had us all sitting on our asses here restless as he was happy to count his spoils and call the day good. And I know you just got here, but my pack needs to know if you’re going to pull that same shit.” It’s not a question. It never was. It’s a veiled threat and he’s ready to watch the response.

“You ever heard of ‘civil peace’, Mason?” Alexander Fortune tilts his head downward and raises an eyebrow at him over his glasses, a wry smile drawing across his face. “Okay. I’ll put this in terms you’ll understand.” He straightens, then, leaving Mason with only the split-second memory of his light eyes as the smile drops off his face and, in a frighteningly calm tone, he says, “Be a good dog and do as you’re told, or you’ll be put down.”

Mason does not step back. Has to tell himself not to. But something in his body about does, if only for the calm, softly condescending echo of Fortune’s tone that completely blindsides him. “Woah there, boss,” he musters. It’s obvious the pretty piece on the side didn’t expect that either- Mason can measure the pallor that consumes him. He looks to the rest of the arena- the men aren’t looking, and fuck hopes they definitely weren’t listening. He pulls down his voice, hands stretched as harmlessly as he may. “Not in front of my guys, alright?”

And he thinks, he gets it. That image of Fortune and his soldier-postured sidemeat fucking with the worldview of their spoils stretched before them on the other end of a full-wall glass. He gets how this man has yet to be gunned down in the street by Nisha’s more enterprising soldiers, how Gage even vouches for him. Quietly, he adds, “You got enough to worry about without a dominance struggle inside the Pack to deal with.”

Fortune takes a drag of his cigarette and stubs it out on his holster. It leaves a fresh black streak across the harness where many have been before. “Sure do. Do me a favor and don’t add to them and we’ll be seeing enough of each other. And you’ll see your caps.”

Mason feels the taste of his jerky rise up in the saliva in his mouth, soaking his tongue in all manner of thoughts and words. Shit. “Not just about caps, boss. It’s about respect. That’s a two way street.”

“Okay.” He searches the arena with his eyes like he’s looking for something, looks back to Mason. “Earn it.”

 

“‘Not in front of your guys’. Is that what you said?”

The blood isn’t on the windows anymore.

It’s the first time, he thinks, that he’s heard the piece talk, and it’s been three weeks. Danse, he has to remind himself. Manmeat has a name, even if manmeat defers to Fortune’s command and word all but all of the time when in company.

In private or semi-private is a different case, from what Mason has seen of that single glimpse down the alley a week back during a quick run to the market.

Mason now has the eternal two images burned into his mind: Alexander Fortune’s dangerous smile as he peered over his glasses to Mason and threatened him to his fucking face, and Alexander Fortune babbling nonsense on his knees, face-down, ass-up on an alley street, hands fisted in his own jacket, glasses lying useless to the side as his adjutant fucks the last bits of logic out of him.

Fortune and his friends have been making bloody waves in Nuka World- literal ones by the look of what’s left of Nisha’s place. Mason thinks, from the look of Gage as he stepped in the elevator on the way up, this isn’t quite what was in that skinny-boned man’s mind when he put Fortune on the seat.

“That’s what I said,” he nods, stepping off the elevator and taking stock of how Colter’s place has changed since his deposement. There’s an awful lot more…  _ kid shit  _ around, Mason thinks, confusedly registering the rack of pink ribbons and memorabilia off to the side, the cobbled-together rifle on the coffee table that looks like the work of a particularly gifted twelve-year-old. “You trying to make a point on respect right back to me? You? Where’s the Overboss?”

Danse is on the couch, crouched over a half-assembled gun, and the Overboss is nowhere in sight. Mason doesn’t have time for this; pulling his men together in the new order Fortune’s exacted on the place has been hard enough.

It’s like the man has been powerplaying him even from afar with all these new and specific rules- and yes, shit’s changed, shit’s improved, down to the power turning back on and Galactic Zone being reclaimed and staked in his crew’s name, yet Mason is-

“Alexander’s inside taking a shower,” Danse says, interrupting the steady crescendo of his thoughts. Mason’s eyes travel to the doors of the flat leading inside- they’re shut. The power armor rack is just beside it, with a gleaming work towering in its frame.

His men have whispered that Fortune has hooked his piece over that frame, draped his arms over the neck of that power armor. Raised his legs like a woman’s, fucked him hard on it.

Mason hasn’t wanted to know, or wanted take those images to bed with him at night. “We thought to have another one-on-one discussion with the bosses in the events following Nisha’s deposement. But as he visited your turf first- you come to ours now.”

“Ours,” he echoes back, even as he takes a seat in the couch across from him. He searches the bar Colter used to keep in the flat- drier than shit, dusty and lacking but for what seems to be a gathering collection of Nuka Cola bottles and capstacks.

He’s honest with himself- he feels horribly out of his element. Even the Pack drinks on occasion. It brings merriment to the pit-fights, a little extra morale and bravado when they seek to take on each other if one of their betting dogs failed.

They sit in silence punctuated only by the occasional click of a piece fitting itself together in the gun on Danse’s hands. Mason’s never heard Nuka World so quiet- there’s usually some screaming, fucking, revelry,  _ something _ . It’s worse than a held breath now. It’s like the place is dead.

Danse doesn’t offer him anything to drink and he refuses to lower himself to asking for fucking Nuka Cola in fucking Nuka World.

Mason’s so set into watching Danse’s hands at work and the setting thirst in his throat that he has to quell the jump in him that rises when the doors skid open. They drag on their half-broken hinges as Fortune lets himself out, still glistening with water under the blue fluorescent light, muttering about doors and food. He’s in his fatigues and only half-buttoned up at the shirt- Mason blinks as he registers the ink ornately etched across the man’s skin beneath his clavicle.

“Sorry,” Fortune says, not seeming to register where Mason’s attention lies. Tattooing is a step above scarification and beyond the warpaint they use in Pack; too often the piss-poor materials they work together to attempt it result in infection, rejection and worse. Mason knows fifty different ways to mix facepaint and has enough scars to mark who he is among the soldiers, but tattoos…

“So I’m not going to fuck around here.” Fortune snatches two Nuka Cola Cherries off the countertop on his walk over, dropping them on the table in front of Mason before plopping himself down right next to the man. “I’m told the Pack has had a number of disturbances since we got the plant working and Nisha put down.”

Mason clears his throat and stares at the drink on the table. Is that an offering? Danse politely has moved his gun away from it, and is in the last steps of cleaning up, and Fortune has moved to uncap his own and take a drink. “My guys are restless, boss,” he says. “Your new world order shit hasn’t exactly given us free rein to be our best selves, if you see how I mean.”

Fortune stares down his bottle. He is without his glasses and it makes Mason study the every movement of his gaze. “Not sure I do.” His eyes flick to him- Mason feels a chill go down his spine as he remembers the dismembered bodies Fortune had the Pack carry out of Fizztop Mountain.

He’d offered to help in the firefight. It seemed like a good show of solidarity. Fortune had just laughed in response, told him,  _ I’ll need you in the fallout.  _ Waved, walked away. His arm caught in the sunshine there and Mason realized then for the first time that that wasn’t  _ his arm _ . And that was the image he’d left him.

“Look. You haven’t exactly been coming by as much as you could.” Mason swallows. That sounds so fucking desperate and it’s dribbling out of his fucking Alpha mouth. “And we’ve been needing more to see you’re with us than just a flag in a theme park with our sign on it.”

“Okay. Like?” He takes a sip of his drink and leans forward, gently takes the gun from Danse’s hands. His metal arm lingers, the water sluicing off of it and leaving a dark shade drop on the table as he takes the piece and turns it over, then returns it wordlessly. Mason wonders what the exchange means, watches as Danse tucks the weapon silently into his shoulder holster.

“There’s been a few people- mostly the scraps of what the Disciples used to be- stirring up trouble. Need to be put in their place.” Mason pauses. “Maybe not the way you did Nisha. If you know what I mean.” He pauses again, watches for any registration of understanding in the Overboss’s look and posture. No one has been comfortable putting this question to him yet, but Mason is not any normal thug. “I have names and collars. You just have to do the clapping, Boss. Make it official. Shit, I don’t even care if your-” he gestures to Danse, “piece on the side does it.”

Alexander Fortune’s metal hand does not twitch, but it does something close to it as it closes around the neck of the bottle. “Mason, did you just call Danse my ‘piece on the side’ when you asked us to do your dirty work?”

He inhales, draws his shoulders back and tries not to look at Danse. The man hasn’t shifted, from what he’s seen, but Fortune is palpably still. And smiling. “Okay, look,” he groans, “us animals don’t care for subtlety much ourselves. I don’t give a shit if you give or receive, or even fucking  _ where  _ you do it, from what I’ve seen you don’t give a fuck either. Shit, what I’m saying is, I’m not averse to the entire idea of fucking adjutants. I don’t fucking know what his official title is and-”

“Mason.” Fortune’s voice drags so low that Mason all but shuts the fuck up on instinct. “You’ve seen us fuck?”

His cock should not twitch in response to that or come to attention in any way. He blames the way he’s brought those images to bed at night, he blames the explicit detail of the reports and the way he’s heard a filthy fucking moan slip over and over out of Fortune’s lips on complete fucking accident

“Boss,” he commands his voice to a growl, the way he knows he can make men shake in their fucking boots with his words even when he’s fucking scared himself. “We’re talking business here.”

“This is business,” Alexander Fortune says, lightly. “You know, where I used to work, people were a little too busy getting shot at to worry who was fucking who. You’re getting pretty involved in my business and making all manner of assumptions.”

He was a mercenary, then? Mason wonders through the rising twist in his chest that challenges every breath. “Listen,” he says, holding up his hands in surrender even as he feels Fortune’s eyes prowl across him. He feels like he is scoped for a weakness, something he didn’t believe he had up until right now. “Listen. No need to be touchy. You’ve just never given him a title for us to call him by. Happens with all of us; a trader we put a collar on proves to be better than that, serves us well. We take away the collar, we reward them. We assumed, okay?” he looks to Danse, then, extending that same surrender with a grin. “We assumed.”

“I’m not his slave.” Mason blinks, absorbing Danse’s tone as the man looks at him, clearly unaccepting.

“Danse is my partner,” Fortune says softly. It’s clear he’s looking at Danse, then, too. “Lover. Husband.” A pause. “You know… I think we’ve miscommunicated just who he is, you know, if you’re going around calling him my piece of ass on the side.”

Shit. Fuck. “All right. I’m sorry. Shit.” He drops his hands and sets them on each knee, looking between them both. Danse is leaned forward, fingers steepled as he seems to watch it all unfold; Fortune remains sipping his Nuka Cola like he’s listening for a fucking appeal. “Didn’t know it was like that and now I do. I’m sorry.”

They’re sweating him; he knows it. He looks Danse right in the fucking stoic pretty boy face and knows it.  _ Husband.  _ What a fucking trifling word to hear these days.

But Fortune’s made it very clear how those who follow him are rewarded- and those who refuse, handled. And as much as Mason would like to treat Danse like the little piece he is, respect is a two-way street.

He wonders if the talk with Mags ended just like this.

“Danse,” Fortune says, “I think you should take out that nice, newly modded gun of yours and let this man give you the full extent of his apology.”

Danse hesitates. Mason blinks, reaches for the weight of his own gun tucked beneath his back-straps. But by the sound of the click that fills the air, Danse is faster. He pauses, exhales a low noise as he slowly brings his hands back to his knees and looks down that barrel. It’s a small piece, but at this distance and with a rock-steady hand aimed on his bare chest, he knows better. He laughs at the gesture still. “You putting me down, Fortune? Taking care of a bad dog?”

There’s a light sniff of amusement from his side. “I’m taking care of you, all right. And call me Alexander.” There’s a pause- Danse’s eyes flicker to the Overboss, make Mason think of every way he could twist this situation. “Get on your knees, Mason. Danse, stand and walk around the table, will you, honey? Let’s call this a lesson.”

Mason considers not obeying, but there is nothing to do but bide his time for a better opening now. He eases off the chair, feeling his chest grip him, his mind stab at him,  _ You getting on your knees for him now? You, an Alpha?  _ Images of the past Alphas flood his mind like a comfort- tarred and feathered bodies hanging stiff over the gates of the Pack territory and catching flies and blistering sunlight.

Fortune- no,  _ Alexander’s _ metal hand is hard and metallic-warm against his back as he tugs his gun out of its holster, leaving an emptiness where weight once was. His hips bump the coffee table as he gets down. The ratty, molded carpet bites his knees through his pants. He hears Danse draw closer, the gun trained on him still, a pinpoint of black to stare down.

“Pretty gun, isn’t it?” Alexander comments, in a pleased tone that implies that he doesn’t care if Mason agrees or not.

His chest twists like a fist around his throat on the inside and he swallows down whatever Alexander wants him to feel. In his peripheral vision the man is just a dark blur; Danse and his gun commands more of his sight. “I’ve seen better if that’s what you’re asking me.”

“Ah. Okay. Danse?”

The blow that comes is completely expected, rattling up the roots of his teeth so his very cheekbones ache and the copper taste of blood pools against the bottomside of his tongue. Mason touches the sore spot instantly. Hand brushes blood and facial hair, gritty and warm. He grins. “Okay, Boss. Prettiest fucking gun in the wasteland. You done?”

He moves to get back up, only to feel the hard weight of Alexander’s metal hand push him back down with a force. “No. You stay down.”

It grips his shoulder, digging into his skin. Fuck.

“Prettiest gun in the wasteland, right? Okay. Open your mouth.”

He stares over his shoulder incredulously. “You can’t be fuckin-”

The gun hits his teeth first, resonating with a hard click that climbs up his gums and aches. The metal wrestles his jaw open as it climbs down his throat, tastes burnt of gun oil and powder and metal still warm from Danse’s body.

It crawls against his unrelenting tongue and shoves it away- it presses to the roof of his throat and chills him in the skull until it gives the back of his mouth a decisive shove. His throat gives its first heave of protest, gagging him until saliva rises and colors his mouth with flavor and metal. Instinctively, Mason’s teeth bite hard-  _ shit-  _ and meet unrelenting metal. The pain shoots all up his jaw, conglomerating with the gag instinct until he meets eyes with Danse, the flesh of his throat heaving against the deep end of the gun. His eyes will not water. He refuses. His eyes will not water. He gags again. Danse does not move.

Saliva pools against the corners of his mouth and the man presses down harder, expression blank but for a singular twitch of the eye. His eyes are brown and flicker in the light.

Mason wants to break his face. Mason clamps his lips over the metal and inhales sharply and doesn’t do them the fucking honor of sucking this piece and looks long into Danse’s eyes and wonders if that brown would look different if all the flesh around it was swollen, purple, cut open, jagged. He can’t- a half-groan gasp escapes him over the object, palpable lunch rising in his throat as it presses and triggers that fucking instinct again, again-

“Mason,” Alexander’s hand squeezes. His bones reply with a tightened, almost indiscernible cracking. Mason broke this shoulder once in a pit fight. Mason feels that break groaning back when the metal of Alexander Fortune’s prosthetic creases under his flesh and pressures him- slowly at first, a building pressure that resonates like a building scream in his mouth, his chest. The man lowers himself, and Mason can smell the fresh warm soap scent clinging to him, feel the dampness of his skin brush his neck like a caress, a callused finger tracing the point beneath his jaw at his throat where the gun is threatening to make him give up his last meal if it stays prodding the back of his throat. “Mason,” he says. “I can either fuck your face with this gun until you forget who you are-” that hand climbs, nestles in his hair and cards through it until it  _ grips  _ and sends a too-close sting of pain lashing across his scalp. Mason does not cry out. “Or you can show how sorry you are your way. Which one are we going to go with today?”

They pause- Danse draws the gun back infinitesimally, and the line of spit glistening across it catches the sun. Alexander’s hand loosens to sweep nails across his scalp, is if to soothe away the hurt where it still whimpers pain in his skin. Mason inhales and feels that fucking soap smell fill him, exhales, feels the heat of his own breath congeal in his mouth where that barrel sits, ready.

Alexander’s voice tugs down to a whisper. “Mason. Do you not know how to suck a cock?”

He does. But there’s no goddamn way he’s letting them know that with a piece warming between his jaws, waiting to have its first fire after maintenance.

There’s no goddamn way he’s letting these fuckers know a thing.

“Okay. I’ll show you.” The pull on his hair is gentle, as if Alexander is not taking a gun from his mouth but sidling him as a lover towards his arms as his head is tipped. A line of spittle draws between his lips and the gun, and Mason’s jaw aches like all hell as he wrestles his mouth shut, stares down that wet barrel.

“Show me the fucking door, Boss,” he rasps, furling his brows as Alexander keeps that grip on his hair. “I’ve had enough. You made your po-”

“Sh,” Alexander grunts in response. “When I’ve made my point, you’ll fucking know. ” He grins up at Danse- a fucking lover’s grin, a trusting grin, a grin you make to someone you give a shit about when you’re about to do something you know they don’t like. “You don’t have to fix the safety, honey. He needs to know exactly how this is going to go.” Mason watches that prosthetic hand whir- silent as a goddamn sandman kill- and gently guide the barrel of the gun towards Alexander’s own face. “You can give it a kiss, to get started, you know,” the man says, casually leaning in towards the tip, eyes fixed upward, eyes on Danse. Mason watches as those lips give way to still-wet metal, the meeting and then clasping and then releasing in a slow, soft  _ smack.  _ “You can make,” he says, nuzzling against the barrel sides and pressing a kiss again, this time wider, hungrier, the pink of his tongue lapping against the bottom before disappearing again, “eye contact.”

Mason suddenly feels that, if Alexander’s hand was not still in a fistful of his scalp, he wouldn’t even matter in this room. “Are you watching?” the man asks, inappropriately calm, as if he’s not nose-up against his man’s gun. Those light eyes flicker to him- a steady gaze over the barrel as Alexander moves back, extends his tongue and runs it straight over the tip, fixing over the sights before his mouth opens. Mason counts the freckles that extend over the jaw of his brown flesh as he watches Alexander inhale, eyes shut, eyelashes meeting with less than a tremble as his head slides forward and the piece fills his mouth.

It’s smooth. His lips stretch a raw pink and press up just short of the trigger guard, and he blinks, eyeing Danse with a look of full, almost lazy trust. And then he moves- tongue weaving forward out and lapping across the bottomside of the gun, almost grazing the guard. Mason can see that infinitesimal tremor in Danse’s finger, resting stiffly over the guard, not the trigger. And he can hear that soft groan in Alexander’s throat, fixed there and susurrating up against that gun in his mouth.

So close. That trigger is so close and yet Alexander’s gaze is half-lidded and content as he moves, working up and down, the flesh of his jaws tugging against the size of the barrel. Mason watches as he pulls forward with a sharp inhale- he inhales with him- as his throat bobs with the mass and Alexander releases a soft, low moan.

Mason’s jeans are suppressing so much tension that the ache could climb up his spine and yank his brains out of his skull, if he wasn’t so firmly fixed there by the pain of Alexander’s fist.

He supposes that even if he did pull that trigger, reach right there and spew the Overboss’s brains in a Rorschach test all over his upholstery, there’d be a second bullet reserved for him courtesy of Danse. He looks up and finds Danse eyeing him with a fixed, gruesomely serious stare and doesn’t suppose anymore- he damn well knows.

Just as sure as the pressure in his cock and the wet noises of Alexander Fortune bobbing gently across the barrel of this gun in his mouth or the tent Danse is pitching in his fatigues at that very moment, Mason can be put down.

The smack of release is accompanied by the lowest gasp of Alexander coming up for air- it brings a hard, terrible twitch down his abdomen and sends him wanting to just sit back and absorb what the fuck he’s just seen. The man’s hand does not relent, though, and the grin Alexander gives him is predatory as he pitches forward to his face. “You good?”

There’s a gleaming line of spittle that rolled down from the ends of his mouth. Mason stares, reeling, jaw clenched at the very thought of taking that gun again. “Fuck,” he whispers. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“That’s not what I asked,” Alexander says, licking his lips and wiping away the mess around his mouth with a smile. “The fuck is wrong with me, Mason?” That laugh is too soft to be real, too low to mean a single damn good thing. “You’re the one who came in here asking my ‘piece on the side’ to clap a man in chains. No. Lean in.” His fist grip tightens all too slightly. “It’s your turn.”

 

Mason goes home under the stars that have not yet been smothered by Nuka-World’s newfound lights and power, reeling, jaw aching, teeth rattling. It had been quick, successive, almost  _ easy  _ if it hadn’t been him on his knees and Danse’s finger so visibly clamped over the trigger where it wasn’t for his Boss.

But anything is easy, Mason knows, if you fucking sit outside of yourself and let yourself forget who you are.

They hadn’t even waited for him to step onto the elevator, staggering, before they’d began. Mason had a full view of how Alexander was ripping off his piece’s clothes and unbuckling his belt. Mason had a full view of the man sinking himself over the lap of his adjutant all over that fucking coach, his head pulled back, his Adam’s apple bobbing gently with a swallow as he took the full length of it.

Mason saw how Alexander tipped his head and watched him slowly lower out of sight as the elevator groaned in work.

 

Nuka World is entirely too bright with all the power on. The street lanterns wipe away the black spaces between every lantern, sets the game parlor lights afire in tacky blues and purples and makes every single menacingly cramped and trashed space visible to Mason’s naked eye as he stumbles home.

And of course, the world is fucking silent. No traders shoved in alley corners with a Raider pushing them down, whimpering and filling the night air with some kind of tempo over the gunfire. No Redeye on Raider Radio.

The Pack members prowl close to the Bradberton now, littering the street in colors that look washed out in the whitelight, guns trained downward, jowls locked with a hungry look that Mason reads, registers, straightens and returns as he passes between and lets them step away in deference.

The anger only consumes him when he’s made it through the amphitheater- all through it is a haze of color, brightness, yapping, yelling, fucking, reverie in violence on his turf that Fortune has still allowed.

Allowed.

Mason’s right fist skins itself on the speckled wall of his room and leaves a dark streak painted across the bright blues and yellows. It gleams against whatever light creeps into his quarters.

He takes a sharp inhale and feels his lungs stabbed by the intake of the warm, animal scent of sweat and blood that pervades his room. Allowed to exist. Allowed to be. Allowed to live. He works his aching jaw and loose teeth and stares at that wall for a long time, feeling his body and mind burn in all the images of the night, the taste of the gun still in his mouth, the burn of a need still in his belly.

Fuck.

He thinks of nothing when he falls back into his cot, pawing at his jaw and gums with one hand, closing his eyes. He won’t. This- his hand crawling and bracing his bare belly with his cold skin- this is nothing. This is control.

This is silence in his mind over the steady fire of anger, this is nothing at all. He bites into his shirt to keep it tucked away as he works beneath his belt. Somewhere, Alexander Fortune is gasping like a whore, lips open wide as he grips his piece against his chest and thrusts open and over and over- but Mason will not think of that. Mason will see nothing- his scraped knuckles scream soreness against the insides of his zipper, his cock gives a responsive twitch to even a single fucking thought.

He sees nothing but the tinge of red that comes away on his shirt as it falls out of his mouth with the first uncontrolled groan.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. Let me know what you think.  
> The "You ever heard of 'Civil Peace'" line is a reference to the wonderful story Civil Peace by Chinua Achebe. I highly recommend you read it.  
> 


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